Bluetooth Low Energy (LE, or BLE, or Smart) is all about sending and receiving data just like any other Bluetooth device, but doing so using much less power. It's ideally suited for M2M applications where a device wakes up, transmits or receives data, then goes back to sleep. The Bluetooth SIG specifies myriad application profiles from healthcare ("Blood Pressure Profile") to Sports and Fitness.
At the recent DESIGN West 2013 conference, editor-in-chief Chris A. Ciufo got the lowdown on Laird's new BL600 Bluetooth LE Smart modules.

At the recent DESIGN West 2013 conference in San Jose, Microchip unleashed a "broad expansion" of new wireless products targeting the M2M, connected cloud, and intelligent devices spaces. There's also a new PIC32 digital audio development kit for Bluetooth audio streaming, plus 802.15.4 modules for ZigBee.

Editor Chris Ciufo spent time with Microchip software manager Joe Drzewiecki at the Spring DESIGN West show (formerly known as ESC). Microchip launched their new MPLAB X compiler strategy that now goes across all Microchip MCUs. It also adds a new license strategy, optimizations that compile 35 percent faster on 32-bit devices (or save 35 percent on code size). There's also a "totally free" version of the MPLAB X compiler. Check out the 3 minute video.